Month: November 2016

I have been cycling (this sounds more manly and adult than saying “riding my bike”) for about three years now. This is because my almost sixty-year-old knees remind me every day they are almost sixty years old. Riding a bike doesn’t make them feel almost sixty years old.

I love riding through the eastern Kentucky countryside, riding through woods and past streams, riding past newly cut hay fields, and fields of cattle and horses. We ride past tobacco in the fields and in the barns, a wonderful smell that brings back memories of fall in Kentucky. We ride past fields of wildflowers.

What an idyllic experience to cycle through eastern Kentucky.

Until…

Many times we are snapped out of this pastoral bliss by the canine consternation, when your body goes from producing hot sweat to cold sweat.

Many people have dogs that protect their property from dangerous, middle-aged bicyclers that roam the rural routes, usually in packs, looking for free air to feed their flat tires. Most of these mutts are not a threat. However,there are those who are threatening and we get to know those very quickly. We ride many of the same routes and we know where the dogs come a-runnin’.

One particular mongrel stakes out his spot in the middle of the road when he sees us coming. We lovingly refer to him as “Cujo”. He has mastered the game of “chicken”, because he will not move. He makes us decide the path we will ride, then the chase begins. He is big, about mid-tire high, and muscular, a bad combination for possible contact with your high velocity velocipede.

Last week the aforementioned happened. Cujo decided he wasn’t going to chase me, so he decided to stop me. He blocked my path like Dick Butkus plugging a hole.

My helmet now has a dent in the side after hitting the pavement with my head inside. There was various scrapes and blood. There was groaning, but I didn’t cry. Even now my insides feel like that side of beef looked after Rocky pounded on it in the meat locker

I took this photo of a man calmly riding his bike through the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. There can’t be a calm ride through these streets. It is ultimate chaos. He has to dodge cars and trucks and motorcycles and buses and other bicycles navigating without lanes, carts pulled by animals, and tap-taps (Haitian taxi’s) loaded with people and their belongings. He also has to avoid goats, pigs, chickens, oxen, and “lions, and tigers, and bears”. Oh MY.

Every day he is playing a real-life Frogger navigating the streets of Port-au-Prince.

I just had to miss one dog in the middle of the road in peaceful Stacy Fork.

Oh how we love that phrase. Nothing activates our dopamine like someone having two extra tickets to an event we desperately want to see.

The thing is, I didn’t desperately want to see this event. In fact I had never heard of this person. Is he a singer? or a magician? or a poet? or a psychic? or a self-help guru? or an evangelist? or a fund-raising politician?

My first reply was “Yes, I will take the tickets.” My second response was “Who is Sturgill Simpson?” I guess that is why they call it dope-amine.

It wasn’t until after I accepted the invite, that I asked my wife. She was in the throes of PMS…Post Mental Shutdown, since it was after 10:00 at night. She did not put up a fight.

As we neared the destination of the concert, I reminded her that the tickets cost $40.00 each. She did not recall that conversation from the previous night. She then put up a fight.

We found our seats in the balcony, behind what I could only describe as a bigg’un. This guy was wearing a local motorcycle group’s shirt that had to be made by a local quilting circle. If a Vietnamese child would have made this shirt, she would have taken it home to be the new roof of her house.

Bigg’un was waving a fifth of bourbon for all to see. Amazingly, the liquid was reduced down to a few tablespoons. It didn’t take long to know where the rest of the missing libation was residing. He turned out to be entertaining, just part of the ticket price.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sturgill Simpson and his band. I tried to describe his music that night to a friend. It was as if the tour buses of Dwight Yoakum, Tower of Power, and Southside Johnny collided at a New Orleans intersection. There was a mixup and these musicians staggered onto a bus and kept touring.

I took this photo of a street musician in Boston near Faneuil Hall. I love to listen to good street musicians. They add so much to the essence and spirit of the city.

I like the fact that the musician’s face is hidden, that it could be any street musician. Also since I did not get permission to use this, my attorney was happy that the musician can’t be recognized.